Before talking about Material Design Icon alternatives let’s first talk about Material Design icons itself. Material design icons are a set of vast icons that include almost all aspects that might be needed to develop a web or mobile application. Google designs these icons under specific patterns and guidelines known as Material design. Since Google designs these icons they are widely used and most icon designers use them as references to create several other icon packs.
However, material icons have their limitations. For starters, they are monochromatic, and sometimes they can make your web or mobile app look dull because of this limitation. Here are a few pros and cons of Material icons-
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Material Design Icons – Pros
- Material Icons are free to use and there are no restrictions on how can you use them.
- Icons are classified in the icon library as per their use and they are very easy to browse through for specific purposes
- In addition to regular icons, you can use various other themes of the same icon. There are 5 themes available: Filled (Regular), Outlined, Rounded, Two-Tone and Sharp
- There are close to 1000 icons available and it gets updated regularly by Google.
Material Design Icons – Cons
- Material Icons are monochromatic. If you want to use multicolor icons then you simply can’t have that feature in the material icons.
- Material icons are CSS friendly and offer a lot of customizations but the same options are limited for other design platforms.
- Material icon designs are the same for a long time and do not look vibrant as compared to other icon sets available in the market.
- Searching for a particular icon in the icon library is difficult. You have to browse through the large set of icons to find the best suitable icons.
If you are one of those developers/designers who always look for vibrant design and something more than just flat icons then we have created a list of 5 best Material Design Icon alternatives with much more designs, usefulness, and flexibility.
Also Read: How to create a beautiful Flutter Login page
5 Awesome Material Design Icon Alternatives
1. swifticons
If you are looking for a set of icons that are well designed, multicolor, and flexible to customize in any way as per your project requirement then no one can beat swift icons. Swifticons, one of the best Material Design icon alternatives, beats material icons on many levels including they can be customized, can be used in various color options including multi-color options, and offer similar icons in various styles.
Swifticons provides more than 2500 well-designed and premium-looking icons in more than 20 categories and 6 different styles that will be well-suited for any kind of project be it mobile app development or web app development.
Design patterns are rapidly changing. Whatever was trending in 2020 may not be significant today and a similar case goes with icons. However, you don’t have to worry on that front as swifticons provides a lifetime free upgrade to icon packs once they are yours.
Pricing –
Swifticons offer various packs of free icons for you to begin with and later you can purchase the premium plan. Swifticons premium offers –
- 2680 icons in 6 different styles with a lifetime free upgrade
- Various icon formats including png, SVG, JPF, PDF, etc.
- 24X7 support for any issues or technical difficulties
The cost of the premium pack is $98, however, you can use the TECH20 coupon code and get 20% off (exclusive to Today’s TechWorld readers).
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2. icon8
Icon8 is a well-known website for free as well as paid icons and clipart illustrations. If you are looking for an end-to-end graphic partner for your whole mobile app or website development journey then you should definitely consider icon8.
Icon8 doesn’t only provide icons and illustrations but also offers services like stock photos, tons of emojis, background remover, face swap, and many more lucrative options.
Pricing –
Icon8 provide free icons on a trial basis with basic feature included like png and limited size options and top of that you can purchase a premium plan that offers –
- 100 icons download per month and on top of that $0.20 per additional icons
- Various icon formats including SVG, png, pdf, etc.
- Icons for various platforms in relevant shapes and sizes like Android, iOS, etc.
3. freepik
freepik is another one of the best Material Design icon alternatives like icon8 that offers tons of icons, illustrations, mockups, templates, fonts, and much more than you need. The best quality about freepik is that they have a very lucid categorization of the content on their website which makes it very easy to find and search for the right content or icon you are looking for.
In addition to their own icons and other content, they redirect to another website with awesome content as well which makes their collection more versatile and offers a wider range of choices.
Pricing –
Most of the content on freepik is free to use as long as you provide author attribution in the given format as suggested by freepik. In another case, you can buy a premium plan ranging between $10-$15 per month.
Also read: 10 Best Mobile App Mockup tools you should try for your mobile app design
4. Flaticon
While discussing about the best Material Design icon alternatives Flaticon cannot be missed. It is a dedicated site for various types of icons including animated icons, interface icons, and many more. Flaticons have clearly categorized the icon sets so that you can enter the category and get the exactly suitable icon for your project.
You also get an option to change the icon style to bold, solid, rounded, or straight as per your need. Flaticon exclusively offers icon sets in various formats including, PNG, SVG, Android, iOS, etc.
Pricing –
Flaticon offers free icons in PNG format but anything on top of that requires a premium plan which ranges from $10-$15 based on the number of months you buy the plans for.
5. IconScout
IconScout is another icon provider website that offers more than 85000 lucrative, colorful, and well-designed icons. IconScout also offers illustrations, vector icons, 3d icons illustrations, and much more.
The best quality about IconScout is that you can put a filter about what kind of icon you are looking for. A few filters include Free, Premium, Individual, Packs, and many style filters. Just put your filter in and get the icon of your choice.
IconScout provides icons based on the use as well. You can get the icon as per your use and it will be like plug-and-play without much hassle. You can download icons for iOS, Android, Windows, Ai, XD, Canva, and many others usage.
Pricing –
IconScout offers two premium packs that are All Access ($14.99 per month) and Icons only Access ($12.99 per month). You can subscribe to any of these premium services and access all content for your project.
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Final Thoughts
Finding alternatives to the Material icon is not easy as it is free and much more convenient to use however we discussed 5 such Material design Icon alternatives in this article. The icon providers included in this article are better than most of the other such service providers and we have described the quality and pricing of each of the icon packs. Feel free to add suggestions and feedback.
